The Right To Live
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Missing scene from episode 9. Spencer's letter to Luculia proves cathartic for Violet as well. (Warning: this story contains mentions of PTSD, survivor guilt and suicidal thoughts).


The Right To Live

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Violet Evergarden

Copyright: Netflix

Spencer looked much better than he had the last time Violet had seen him. For one thing, he wasn't lying in a gutter; for another, his eyes were clear and his hands steady, proving that he had cut down on drinking. Nothing could be done about his bad leg, however, or the lines of suffering on his round face. He sat down in his wicker chair with a creak and a sigh.

"Okay, uh … give me a moment," he said. "I'm not sure what to say."

Violet waited, metal hands poised over her typewriter. Many of her clients were like this at first. At least he wasn't staring at her hands like some did; maybe because he knew firsthand how humiliating that could be, to have your injuries on full display to the world.

"You said it was an apology letter to your sister, yes?" she prompted, after a few silent minutes broken by nothing but Spencer's restless fidgeting in his chair.

"Yeah." He hung his head, avoiding her eyes.

"What are you apologizing for?" Cattleya always said she was too blunt with her clients, but as in war, she found that a direct plan of attack often worked best.

"Everything, I guess." Spencer's voice was muffled by the hand he rubbed over his face. "The drinking. Being an idiot. Making her clean up the mess I made every night. Taking her for granted."

Violet couldn't see a mess anywhere in this bright, sunny living room, but then she had never been there during the time he spoke about. She had a new respect for her friend Luculia, who had never once complained about what must have been very aggravating behavior by her brother. All she had said to Violet was how glad she was that he had survived the war, and how much she wished he would recover.

"Is that all you wish to say?"

"Yes … no … I dunno." Spencer scowled at the crutch leaning against his chair. "Some things it's hard to even think about, let alone write about. I want her to know some things, but I … I don't want her to _know_ , if you know what I mean?"

"Please explain."

"Damn it, Miss Violet!" He thumped one large fist on the arm of his chair. " _You_ know. You were a soldier too, Luculia told me."

She looked from his battered wooden crutch to her adamant silver hands with their many joints, a miracle of modern engineering. She remembered: _the agony of the bullets tearing through her shoulders as she led Major Gilbert through the crumbling city; her futile attempt to drag him along with her teeth; his final desperate shove before the bomb exploded._

Her hands, being artificial, remained steady above the keys, but her heart trembled as she answered, "Yes, I am."

"I couldn't save them," Spencer burst out. "Our parents. The whole city was up in flames. I trained for months to learn to protect our country, and when the time came to finally do it, I failed."

 _The taste of blood and gunpowder in her mouth. The boom of explosions in the distance. The terrified eyes of the young Gardarik soldier who ran away when she aimed her rifle at him. The Major's words forced out through gritted teeth: "Just leave me here. Run."_

"Stuff like that goes running around in my head in the middle of the night. Drinking used to help, but, hell, you saw how that worked out, didn't you? Now all I do is stare at the ceiling and wait 'til it's time to go to work."

 _Sitting curled up in her room, not eating or sleeping, ignoring a worried Cattleya on the other side of the door. Trying to strangle herself with her own hands._

"What I don't get is how Luculia can still be so damn thankful I'm alive, when I'm the reason she's got no one else left. Sometimes I still don't see how I have any right to live … but how can I tell her that?"

 _Dietfried Bougainvillea's green eyes, so like and so unlike his brother's, narrowed in icy contempt. "How can you write letters with the hands that killed so many?"_

But they weren't the same hands anymore. Literally.

She looked up from her still-empty sheet of paper into a different pair of green eyes, hazel rather than emerald, and full of unshed tears. Spencer had the same eyes as his sister, one of the kindest people Violet had ever known. He did not deserve to feel the way Violet had been feeling since the Major's death. Nobody did.

She had never felt angry on her own behalf, but seeing this awkward, sincere young man suffer made her suddenly long to pick up a gun and go after the generals who had declared this war in the first place. She would make them pay for every young life they'd ever ruined.

It was a fantasy, of course. More blood on her hands wouldn't solve anything. That couldn't be what the Major had in mind when he named her after a flower and sent her to live with kind-hearted civilians.

Besides, she had a better weapon now: her typewriter. She pounced on it, making the keys rattle like machine-gun fire as she wrote.

"What – what are you writing?" Spencer hauled himself to his feet and limped over to the desk to look over her shoulder. "Can I see?"

She ignored him until she was finished. Then she took out the paper and gave it to him without a word.

 _Dear Luculia_ , it read.

 _I cannot tell you what your letter meant to me, all those months ago._

 _I am sorry I made your life so difficult when I came back from the war: drinking, being an idiot, making you clean up the mess I made. Please understand that it was never out of malice towards you. It was myself I was fighting all along._

 _Your gratitude for such a life as mine humbles me. I do not know if I deserve it. What I do know is that, after everything you and I have lost, we must hold tightly to what remains._

 _I do not know why my life was spared when so many were not, but I will do everything in my power not to waste it._

 _I, too, am grateful beyond words to have you here._

 _Love,_

 _Spencer_

 _(Dictated to Violet Evergarden, CH Postal Company)_

As he read it, heavy tears began to roll down Spencer's face. He held the paper hastily on a coffee table. From her months of experience with personal letters, Violet was almost sure she could recognize these as the right kind of tears, but as complicated as emotions were, she decided to ask, just in case.

"Is the letter to your satisfaction?"

"Hmm? Yeah." He wiped his eyes with his fist and let out a shaky laugh. "Boy, you sure made it fancy. Sounds a lot smarter than me."

"I could revise it in a more colloquial style if you prefer … "

"Oh no, no." He limped over a drawer, pulled out a folded handkerchief (Luculia's work, by the embroidery) and blew his nose with it. "It's perfect. This way she'll know it's from both of us."

Violet nodded.

" _Hold tightly to what remains,_ " he murmured, the paper trembling in his big hands. " _Everything in my power not to waste it._ That's just what I was … my God, Miss Violet, how did you know?"

Violet's hand went to the Major's emerald pinned to the ruffles on her shirt, then to the stenographer's brooch at her collar. She thought of Hodgkin's brown plush dog sitting on the desk in her quarters, Cattleya's typewriter, and the parasol with which she had run across a lake.

"I was a soldier like you," she said, "That is how I know."

Spencer stood at attention, or as nearly as his leg would allow, and saluted.

Her metal hand flashed dazzlingly in the sunlight as she returned the salute.


End file.
